While that may be true for photovoltaics produced from boule-grown and sawn silicon used in the space program, I don't believe that it is true for the various thin-film solar cell types. If you have data to the contrary, I'd like to see it.
Any fool who has ever lived in LA Knows the reason there aren't basements in some neighborhoods is that they would soon fill with oil! In fact, there's an old LA Oil Company (Kelly) whose only source is pumping the basements of large office buildings! (hey, it's a living.) Beverly Hills is loaded with oil wells, including one under, the bleeping playing field where Monica Lewinsky once jiggled. Many a Hollywood loudmouth collects royalties from Beverly Hills oil! Check it out!
There is a giant totally natural oil seep right off the beaches of Santa Barbara, etc. ad nauseam. Yet the enviro-wackos insist that there be no more drilling.One more dumb factoid: The steam cleaning and detergents used on the beaches of Alaska after the Exxon Valdez struck were more environmentally harmful than the oil.
Like wow, dude, oil is like organic? Detergents are not? And like live steam at 1200F could kill tiny living things dead? Oh wow?
But speaking nuclear, one big mistake we made is not standardizing nuclear plant design. In NJ alone, there were four different types of reactor planned. The big local utility (PSE&G)and their boring management, belt-and-suspenders-Babcock-and-Wilcox-Coal-Fired-Steam-Generating Old-Time-Engineers, who knew nothin' about nucular, and were proud of it, made another huge error. Instead of hiring someone off Jimmy Carter's submarine, they went to great trouble and expense to find a mystical atomic/swami/wallah from a land which shall remain nameless, to be the chief nuclear engineer. He hired about a thousand more similar fellows, whose previous technical job experience had apparently been as tiger bait, to help out, and 14 years later they still had no nukes on line! I still have their memos: priceless. The company, once the richest utility in the land, went stony broke! .
Hey, we have learned a lot since then. Time to do it right and get those nukes fired up again! Good model? France, (believe it or not) where, since every plant has the same controls, trained crews are available who can go into any setup and straighten it out in case of emergency. Right now they are getting about half their electricity from nukes. They also pioneered molding the waste products into glass blocks and lowering them into salt mines 13,000 feet underground.
Also what people don't get is that all the nuclear waste from powerplants in the country for a year occupys the same cubic footage as a small house. It ain't a whole lot of tonnage, probably less than the BS emitted by environmentalists in a month!